Do Not Be Afraid
by SarahFromHell
Summary: Zilpha's POV. Tracks canon up to episode 6/7ish, then will diverge, due to the apparent inability of the show writers to conceive of women as human beings. References even more completely unproven fan theories! 'Cause that's just how I roll. Oh and this is "Taboo" after all, so expect dark and gothic.
1. Sin

**Sin**

Hell has opened up. And now Zilpha knows that the Devil has come for her. And he _will_ come for her, again and again. She expects no mercy any more.

At night, on the steps. The night's breath cold on her face. The heavenly melodies of Beethoven wafting over her still, from the open doorway. But she is not deserving of heaven.

Her brother's eyes had sought hers in the mirror. As once they had _been_ her mirror. Searching, coveting, finding and grasping tight. As once they had always sought out each other's eyes, at tedious summer tutor's lessons, in the hallways, among gatherings full of starched and self-important adults. But now his face is shadowed and scarred, a savage African face. And it is the wretched sinfulness of her nature that she sees reflected there. He'd downed a glass of her husband's good sherry at one go and regarded her thoughtfully. _And I will drink you in like this_ , his eyes said, s _oon._ He knew very well, damn him, that she had not forgotten how to read what was in his gaze.

She had to come out, of course. If she didn't he'd make a scene, probably just one more glass of sherry would do it. People said that Africa had driven him mad, but she knew that this particular form of madness had sprouted in him before he ever went there. She remembered his low earnest voice in the green glade, reading her a poem:

" _My Sylph darting through the moonlit wood at night / Whose noiseless step floods my senses with delight"_

" _Change it to 'wood-nymph'. That way you'll be able to publish it if you want."_

His nose had wrinkled up, as if he'd smelled something foul. _"That would spoil the meter."_

" _Just 'nymph', then."_

"No _. I'll keep it as 'sylph', and publish it, and let the whole world judge."_

" _You're ridiculous."_

" _And you're mine_ ," eyes boring into her, hands pushing her down into the pine needles. Her fault, for coming into the woods with him, for letting him take her, body and soul.

And now he stands on the cold steps with her, importuning her, and she could laugh, she really could. It is just as ridiculous now as it was then. Only infinitely more dangerous.

"You used to straighten your skirts, and march away like nothing had ever happened." The look on his face is one of pagan worship. His low musical voice seems to enter her, as he once entered her, she can feels its vibrations in her body. God, she remembers everything. But she also remembers how _he_ marched away, left her alone in England to deal with their father, left her alone in England to rot. No. Think about sin, it's safer.

And he says his bit and she says hers, and she walks away and actually thinks for a moment that this will be the end of it, and then he calls out some nonsense about the river that connects them, some savage godless nonsense she doesn't want to understand. And at that moment the Devil takes hold of her. Like Eve she is curious, tempted, falls. What has he become? She whirls around to march right into him:

"Did you really eat flesh?"

"Why don't you tell your friends that you're sick, and you can come and hear everything." He does not mean _hear._ His voice has taken on the same slow singsong cadence it had when he spoke about her skirts. But this time it is tinged with an accent that is not English, an alien and barbarous accent. A picture comes into her head, the two of them naked together in the bed their father died in, sharing an unholy repast, a murderous feast. But she is a sensible woman, and does not believe in rumors.

He is near enough to draw her face to his. She puts her hand on his face, gently, to forestall him. "I would laugh at you, but you're not well." She turns to go. He follows on her heels like one of their father's hunting dogs. "And I can't _stand_ to have you this close to me."

"Well that is a shame, isn't it? Because I will always _be_ this close to you..." His hand moves up to barely touch her face, shaking at her in the old gesture they used to use, that means _always._ It also means _possession._ Her heart breaks for her brother, so naïve in his madness, unable to see the truth she learned years ago. It is a sinful, degraded closeness.

"...won't I?"

No you won't, she thinks. But she does not waste more time arguing with him. He cannot understand. He was not there.

She'd visited their father often after her marriage, in his grief and later on his sickbed, a virtuous daughter. Someone had to do it; James was far away in Africa, dead. Or far away in Africa, having grand adventures and forgetting all about her; she did not know which was worse. And that old fool Brace was far too busy drinking away what was left of their father's pipe-dream shipping company to look after him properly. She'd fed him tea and sandwiches and buttered scones with jam. She'd listened quietly as he raved at her, blamed her for not being born of that red Indian woman, blamed her—when he'd gotten too far into the company brandy with Brace—for taking after that red Indian woman all too much. She'd listened patiently as he told her she had Eve's sinful nature, had seduced her poor brother just as Eve had seduced Adam in the garden, and where was the child Cain? Ah, that you'll never find out. He'd even slapped her sometimes, for childish things like bringing the wrong kind of jam, and that fool Brace had just sat there drinking through all of it.

She'd gone down to the cellar, reached out for the shelf where she and her husband kept the supplies for warding away rats. She'd fed him arsenic, drop by ungrateful drop.

She cannot afford to fall into sin again.


	2. Fear

**A/N: In honor of Valentine's Day-hah!-this chapter contains smut.**

* * *

 **Fear**

Zilpha is in a place she knows well. Fronds of fern and flowering creepers brush her thighs. Careful of that one, for the thorns. The ever-rustling green above her forms a complex matrix of light and shadow at her feet.

The fear, the tightening of the throat and jaw, the _am-I-being-good?_ and _what-would-everyone-think?_ that have become the constant companion of her days, are absent.

She is naked.

She feels rather than hears or sees a presence behind her, following. James of course. Who else would ever follow her here, for any reason more important than didn't you hear the dinner bell, wouldn't you rather be nice and safe at the house little lady, please try to behave?

 _Find me._ She knows how to move through the jungle without a sound. But deliberately, here and there, she makes some noises. The drop of a stone into a small pool. A short, breathy laugh.

She catches a glimpse of him, sharp eyes roving, searching for that small flash of color that is not a bird, not a frightened animal, smelling the air. He is naked too. But not like her. His body is marked everywhere, covered all over with scars and tattoos. African. Here she does not think _savage, heathen, godless,_ just: _African._ But every tattoo and scar on him has a story, she knows, and she has none of her own. Lust and rage rise up in her in equal measure. She will take him by the throat, throw him down, and force those stories from him.

But he takes her first. Strong ink-marked arms wrap around her, pulling her into him. She feels his tongue licking at her neck, and then his teeth. His cock presses against her, hard and demanding. _Feel me._ She manages to shift around in his arms, to face him. She pulls his white face to hers and kisses his red lips. His mouth tastes of ash and raw meat.

He bites her bottom lip, moves down and bites her neck, her breast. He wants to mark her red, in all the places where he is black. His lips close around her nipple, and her nails dig into his shoulders. He pulls his head up again and looks into her eyes intently, as if staring into the heart of a flame.

He slides a hand in between her legs and finds the nub there, reaches for it with his thumb and begins to stroke her, slowly but firmly, purposefully. Her knees begin to bend. He follows her to the ground. And she is on her back on the damp forest floor. Laid out like a feast for him to devour. He slides in, and she can feel the entire weight of her brother's body press down upon her.

And then there is a shift...

And it is not her brother coming down on her. Not anything so human. He is wearing a mask; the mask of a beast, or of a god. She doesn't know what he is. What she knows is that she _wants_ it. She throws her head back and screams, shameless as a bitch in heat. The masked thing seems to feed off her screams, his thrusts redouble in speed and power. She raises up her hips to meet his. And she is free, she is in ecstasy, she is...

She is brought back to horrified reality when she hears herself cry out. Not _God_ or _James_ or _I love you_ or another wordless moan, but sharp words of love and lust in a language she'd tried to believe forgotten. The secret language of childhood. James's language. And then she hears James's voice in her head speaking in that third language, that African language she doesn't know, his unknown words battering her down. And she prays:

"Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen."

She is lying alone on sweat-soaked sheets in her marital bed.

And she knows it is her soul that is the prize in these night battles.

Her husband comes in. Mutters some angry words about the king. Can he see, can he tell? She stares at him in absolute fright. He wants to touch her, but she is afraid of what touch will unleash. He reaches out absently and grasps her thigh, as if he owned it. Which of course he does; did she not promise to love honor and obey? Nevertheless she tries to move away his hand. He ignores her, moves it up higher. "And you're wet too." She does not dare to meet his eyes, but he grabs her chin and forces her face to meet his. "Who's in there?"

 _He knows._

She tries to make herself absent of everyone. Of James, of the masked thing, of herself.

As her husband begins to unbutton his clothes, she can feel her soul leaving her body. It is not the first time.

…

The fear is holy, it protects her. Where the fear is not there, the Devil will find a hole to get in. Like the small rip in her right stocking she'd discovered after coming home from the church in the afternoon, and she'd wanted to keep it just as it was but instead had recited a Psalm to herself and gotten out her needle and thread and mended it, and as she'd done so she'd pricked herself with the needle and seen the blood blossom out, put her thumb in her mouth and wondered who else could taste it.

Her husband gives her no respite from the fear, no comfort, he fills her all breakfasts and suppers with his harangues about her wicked nature and barren womb. He does not really know nor care about her wickedness, it is her womb that most concerns him. _My charms have faded in his eyes, I'm naught but a belly to him now._ Perhaps it had all faded the minute the first faint furrow appeared around her mouth. Once he had charmed her. Once he had waltzed with her and called her "angel", praised her for her sweet fawnlike eyes and soft white hands and everything else that she was not.

(I have taken Queen Anne's lace, she whispers to the face behind the grille, I know it is contrary to God's plan but my husband does not know how to manage our money, he is continually wasting it on drink and on the jewelry and fine china he thinks I want, I fear to send an innocent child into ruin, and the old priest absolves her every time)

(and she speaks not a word about the other innocent, the one that was lost)

She has an occasion to practise Christian charity with her husband when he raves so. It is not so bad. _You torture him_ , James had written, and she can see for herself that that is the case. Dear God, she did not want to. She pities him, and pray for his soul to find peace.

The worst is when he starts up again about the inheritance. He worries at that petty subject like a dog chasing its own tail. And she has tried to tell him more than once that they are comfortable enough to not need whatever money can be bled from the Nootka land, and that she feels no wounded honor about this supposed birthright. She did not need the will to perceive that her father does not love her. But her husband presses on, and she is _bored._ Her mind drifts and she dreams of running out of this stuffy house. Of feeling the cool salt wind on her face as she boards a ship bound for the New World.

Better the night battles. Asleep and awake. The waking battles where she is slapped, forced. And tells herself afterward that it is a punishment. Better even that than this longing, this wanting.

When the fear loses hold the want will get in and her true nature will out. She remembers James talking to her when they were children, telling her about his first time. And the times after. She had looked off into the distance, thought for a while and told him:

" _The whores are all right for now I suppose. But if you should become engaged to any of those vapid little fortune-hunters Mother's always inviting over..."_

" _What makes you think I would"_

" _...do not take tea in this house again. Because if you do she will never see you again—you understand?"_

He had known she meant it, but he did not care. He had smiled, said _"I love you"_ and kissed her again, hard enough to bruise. That was how it was—they had always been too free with one another.

…

Waking from a dream of James, she slips out the door of her room. They are supposed to be something she fights, but lately she's found comfort in them. For since the morning of the duel, she's tortured herself with thoughts that her brother might be dead. Or else gone to America, and forgetting all about her. Which is worse?

Her husband is there waiting for her with another stranger. A "holy man of God" with commonplace thoughts of lust and money in his eyes. They tell her he is there to remove the demon from her. The "Barbason", they call it. But she knows that whatever name they give it, it is a lie.

It is not the Devil or James but her own soul, her own self that they seek to remove. They have taken away her mother, her brother, her son. The last shreds of her good name. And now they are going to take her soul away from her, and she will have nothing left.


	3. Power

**A/N: Contains my rendition of the scene we all wish was longer.**

* * *

 **Power**

Slowly, she gets up off the floor where they left her, the priest and her husband. She can still feel the imprints of that foul priest's hands on her breasts from where he squeezed them as he said that mumbo-jumbo over her, _spiritus sancti_ and so on and so on, can still smell the stink of his self-satisfied breath. She wonders how "inexpensive" the payment her husband made for this really was. No price too high, it would seem, for an obedient wife. And he thought _this_ would cure her? Yes, he thought it would cure her. She wonders that she ever found him charming. That she ever found him kind, or gentle. That she ever found him safe.

Her brother had been taken from her, her child had been taken from her. Gone to Africa and the Devil knows where, quite probably dead. And she had wanted only to repent for her sin, for her part in that dreadful loss, to devote herself to a kind and good man and stay shut up within that virtuous married state, locked in safe as a nun in a nunnery. But now she sees that there is no safety anywhere. Not even in the home. _Especially_ not in the home. And God? He was not in that room with the lit candles and the holy water and the priest. She is not sure he was ever there.

Let the Devil take her, then. Let the Devil flow into her and through her. Let the Devil become her.

She can feel the Devil's power in her, flowing through the veins in her hands.

A prayer forms in her mind, more sincere than any she has ever uttered. She is untrained in James's savage sorceries but she can learn, she can learn. She reaches out to him, of her own free will, as she has never done before. _Teach me,_ she whispers silently into the darkness. _Guide me._

In the darkness, she hears a response.

The voice seems to come from deep within her, and yet it does not. Its timbre is deep and dark and savage and oddly feminine, but then James had said that she and he were the same person and he was right, he was right. She sees that now. _Listen, and I will show you what to do._ Then more words come, words she doesn't understand, and then there is a flickering in her mind like a match going out.

And she knows.

She _remembers._

It is not the Devil, it couldn't be, it is only James, in all the world only James has ever spoken to her in that language. _My child. My love._

A few nights later, she stands above her husband's supine form. He sleeps in a drunken stupor, dead to the world; she made sure of that earlier that evening, at dinner. She is no longer afraid of him. Nor is she afraid of herself. Nor of anyone. She looks at him lying there on the bed and feels only contempt. He would take her to Australia, would he? And pretend that all is forgiven? As if he were the only one with the power or the duty to forgive. Sadly for him, she is done with doing her duty.

She has her hatpin in one hand, and a handkerchief from the drawer in her other. She lifts his nightshirt up and feels rather than sees the matrices of energy on his body, telling her where the vital organs are, exactly where the whispers in her mind said they would be. She is not afraid.

She is surprised, though, by how easily the hatpin slides in, by how quickly his body succumbs. All of her life she has been lied to, she sees. For she had always imagined a man's flesh to be hard all over, hard and strong where hers was weak and soft. And now she sees quite clearly that it is not.

…

She bangs on the door of the old house. And yes, it's James there answering her, candle in hand, his dear body barely covered by an old nightshirt, his eyes still knowing her. She can barely get her hair down and her shoes off fast enough. The instant he comes to join her by the fire she rushes into his arms.

But he does not embrace her back. His body is stiff with what feels like fear. No, that's stupid. Her brother has killed and is a sorcerer and has probably eaten flesh. What has a man like that to be afraid of?

"What have you done?" he asks

"I've killed him," she whispers into his neck like a kiss. She must be more beautiful to him now, she thinks, than ever before.

...

He is absent from the service. But when she walks out of the church he is down there in the hole dug for her husband, swinging a pickaxe furiously into the solid earth, looking like an incarnation of Death. It's necessary work of course, they cannot afford to have the grave robbers tamper with _this_ grave. But he could have paid two shillings. No, her brother is doing this work because his hatred for the man has not relented, even after she's put him in the ground. She remembers the night of the Count's party, how James had dragged him outside and thrown him to the ground and looked at her: _Are you absolutely sure you want this cockroach alive?_ The barest inclination of her head would have done it. And so she had kept her face very still, locked in the mask of shock, _shock_ that everyone else wanted her to feel.

When he is done with his work he still does not join the mourners. He stands a few yards away among the trees at the edge of the churchyard, his eyes those of the forest itself penetrating her.

The other mourners leave but she stays there regarding the freshly turned earth, for she is the grieving widow. She inclines her head carefully so that none but him will see her lips creep upward into a triumphant smile. He stands still as a ghost and continues to watch her. She can see herself through his eyes. She is quite proper in her long dress of mourning black, her gloves, her hat, her veil, her quite-clean hatpin slid in all the way to hold it firmly in its proper position. She is a siren veiled in black lace. Rain starts to fall over the churchyard; they are almost alone. He nods, the barest inclination of his head. She looks over her shoulder, just once, but lingeringly.

 _Find me._

The carriage arrives at her house. It is empty, the servant's already been sent out. She goes upstairs and does not lock the door. She has not even the time to take off her hat before she hears his boots pound up the stairs. Coming to take. He bursts into her room, greatcoat and gloves and top hat still on, riding crop still in hand.

"Take that dress off."

She does not move a muscle, just looks at him.

 _I killed the last man who told me what to do,_ her eyes say.

"Take that fucking dress off now!"

She pauses one moment more, then her lips curl upward in recognition. For this is the truth of him. This is who he is when he is alone.

She can feel it pouring off his body in waves, the intensity of his desire for her. Raw and selfish and brutal. He had never spared her all that much, and now he will not spare her at all.

She doesn't want him to.

She walks right up to him, takes the riding crop from his hand, glances at it briefly and lets it drop to the floor. He lets her. Then his hand closes over hers and pulls it to his cock. She feels it strain against the fabric that separates them, wanting her, searching out her flesh. She lifts her other hand up, reaches up to the back of his neck and knocks off his top hat. Let all that shit fall off. He grabs her arse and presses her even closer to him. _Mine._

Then he pushes her away. Rips off his gloves in a few short motions, flexes his fingers and stares at her. The unspoken demand lies between them; he does not repeat it a third time.

Slowly, very slowly, in a deliberate fluid motion, she takes off her earrings, unfastens the clasp of her necklace and lets it fall. Tilts her neck upward to invite a kiss on the throat. Lifts up her veil for him to see it better, then turns away from him and places her hat and veil upon the bed. Thrusts her arse out at him like the animal she really is.

She feels his hand crawl up her leg, searching, finding. Feels his other hand winding into her hair and undoing it, his hot breath on her neck. The hem of her mourning dress is hiked all the way up now. He intends to take it off her himself, as he intends to take off anything and everything that denies him access to her. "There's buttons..." she whispers, and then she gasps. He has found.

"Yes?" he says into her ear. He is stroking her into a frenzy now and she is shaking against him.

"And take off that damn coat."

"Oh I will." But he does not let her go until she screams. "Zilpha," he says then, softly.

She works off the buttons with anxious fingers. The heavy black fabric feels alien to her. He has cast aside with quick savage disdain his boots, his jacket, his shirt, his pantaloons—everything but the necklace, his totem. This he wants her to see. Know. She only gets a glimpse for in another moment he is upon her. Unlacing her stays, roughly pulling at the collar of her shift. He will have her. The shift tears in his hands.

She shrugs it off and pulls him to her. She kisses him, drinks in deep the taste of his mouth on hers. Her hands explore the scarred expanse of his back; her nails dig in and make the scars deeper. Her leg goes up to wrap around his, wetness trailing on his thigh as his arms close around her and he rakes a path of red up her thighs and arse, buries his face in her neck and sucks and bites at the warm flesh. From this time onward she will not leave his embrace. He pushes her down to the bed and starts to move inside her. A slow, undulating motion that then grows fierce. She is in complete abandon, laughing and moaning, kissing every inch of his flesh she can reach as he kisses and licks hers, she cannot get enough...

And then all of a sudden she notices a change. His face turns away from her in sudden apprehension, as if another were in the room spying on them. She is exultant, she does not care; she will finish with him and then they will kill whoever it is together. But in fact when she casts a brief glance outward, there is no one there. She pulls on his neck, forces his face back to her face, to her body. _Mine._ But his eyes roam over her as if she were no more than another part of the room, and then...

And then his hands are on her throat and it is no longer a gesture of possession, the dark possessiveness of his nature that would kill her before letting her go, that she once tried to hide from but now welcomes as simply a part of herself, no, it is something else. He does not see her. All he sees is his own fear.

He pulls away from her, picks up his clothes and hurries out the room as if a murderer were at his throat, and she would have run after him, pulled him to her and soothed him and taken him again into her arms, but she is struck with fear herself and cannot move. What has he become? What have _they_ become? The fear she's carried for over a decade has returned, sharp and brutal like a punch to the chest, and it is all she can do to pull the sheets over herself after he leaves and then just lie there, every muscle clenched tight, crouched into a ball, feeling the chill of death. And then the voice in her head speaks again:

 _Do not be afraid my child. Your husband, he is killed. And his killing is only among the first that you will do._


	4. (Addendum: Notes on Writing)

A/N: OK, I know this website doesn't like us posting chapter-long author's notes, but I have a lot of thoughts about this show and this story and I feel like I'll explode if I don't say them.

I didn't think I would write another "Taboo" story after "Prayers". James's "voice" came easily to me, his character made intuitive sense to me, but Zilpha's character remained somewhat of a cipher in my mind. I couldn't understand why such an obviously smart and strong-willed woman would choose to deny her impulses at every turn and stay with a petty, controlling man. It was only after she killed her husband in episode 6 that her character became clear to me, and I saw a clear vision in my mind of what she'd been, what she was, and what she would become.

Unfortunately, the show writers did not have any vision of her at all.

First of all, the bedroom scene in episode 6. The cut the show writers made. What a missed opportunity for character development. And no, I don't just mean "character development" wink wink—I mean actual fucking character development. I mean, I get that you are trying to tell a story within a limited time frame, and that this show is supposed to be high drama and not porn. I get that Regency-era clothing is pretty hard to get out of quickly! But, picture it in your head: this is a woman who has just gotten out of an abusive relationship, _who has in fact murdered her abusive husband less than 24 hours prior,_ and the first thing her lover does when he comes into her bedroom is to start giving her orders. And then they just jump-cut to the two of them ecstatically in bed together? I'm not saying that Zilpha wouldn't have had sex with James, or that she'd have started seeing James as yet another bastard she has to kill. But there would have been some sort of decision made, some sort of negotiation. Unspoken, because these two don't really communicate much in words—can you picture them having one of those "healthy relationship talks" we're all supposed to be having these days with our SO's? I sure as fuck can't—but some sort of power-negotiation would have taken place, enough for Zilpha to get across that she wants him very much but also expects to be his equal and not his doormat.

And then episode 8. Yeah, FUCK episode 8. These idiot writers set up an entire character arc around a woman trapped in an abusive marriage coming into her own power, setting herself free from the societal expectations that imprisoned her, and then they have her kill herself before she can actually do anything with it? They set her up as someone who's just developed occult abilities, and then kill her off before she can use them in any way? And after all that dialogue about her and James being "the same person", and her rejecting James like ten gazillion times before he gets her where he wants her, we're supposed to believe she'd kill herself because James rejected her _once_? It just makes zero sense, unless they just saw her all along as nothing but a sex object / "tragic" love interest for James. Like there's a difference. I don't care whether you ship James with Zilpha or not, this is not about shipping, because what this show did to Zilpha they also did to Winter and to Helga. And will probably do to Lorna as well, the second she starts having desires of her own again besides wanting to help poor James, soothe poor James, stop poor James from destroying himself. Remember when Lorna had an acting career? Remember when the show dropped broad hints that she was probably an American spy? Yeah, me neither.

I was going to have this fanfic just go for three chapters, but now I feel this great need to continue it. Because "Taboo" is basically an anti-colonialist fantasy, which is great, but it's an anti-colonialist fantasy that systematically kills off its women. And fuck, I really didn't want to go political with this. I hate bringing politics into fandom because it just leads to every ship fans enjoy being condemned as "unhealthy", and pointless "OMG what message are we sending to teen girls" arguments while the real world destroys itself all around us. I just wanted to write some fun James/Zilpha smut, add some ominous eerie supernatural stuff and call it a day. But this shit cannot stand. Get ready for part 4.


	5. War, Pt I

**War, Pt. I  
**

The servants have been sent out again, for provisions. They seem to understand their mistress's true wishes without a word being spoken directly, for they take a long time at the markets whenever they are sent out of the house. It makes no difference. Zilpha is never alone, now. A cacophony of voices cries out in her mind in languages she cannot understand, but she knows they are screams of rage and betrayal. Sometimes her husband joins them. _Murderer,_ he sneers. _Whore._ Sometimes her father's voice, much fainter, is there echoing him. Sometimes she cannot tell the difference between the two.

And above all of these, the presence of the one she called on. She can feel its presence inside her whether it speaks or not; this Devil she willingly let in.

She soaks for a long time in the bath, sinking deep into the lukewarm water, wanting to drown herself, knowing she will not. She could have just waited for her husband to kill her if that was what she wanted. The maid's come back in, she hears the commotion in the kitchen: footsteps and humming, which quickly turns into outright song. "The Pig of Fine Pall Mall." She has a pretty voice, that one. Zilpha calls to her, and the song dies immediately. She drags herself out of the tub, dries off, puts on her shift and awaits the maid's help with her stays. She will go out to the docks today, take in the sea air, and from there go on to their father's offices. He has not come to her since the day of her husband's funeral. But he has to—he must—he _will_ understand.

In the harbor sits the corpse of a ship, blackened and destroyed. All that had sustained her, all that had kept her alive while her husband spat meaningless words in her ear about his blasted holy marital rights, the inheritance she would not take and the son she would not give. All gone now.

"Do you know who blew up your ship?" She is surprised by how calm her voice sounds.

He does not answer her.

He offers her tea, as if she came on a polite social call. She could laugh, she really could, if she did not feel Death settling into the pit of her stomach. They are alone in the office, what does any of this matter? She sits down. She has a right to be here.

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened, and..." _say something damn you_ "...and I think we were right. "There wasn't the time for such..." Her whole body flushes, remembering. "And we have plenty of time."

"No." He just sits there like a rock. As if his body had gone dead. As if he no longer remembers how he'd stormed into her room with her husband barely cold in the grave, how they'd stripped each other bare, body and soul. "No, we don't."

He does not look at her.

She examines his face closely. "When you first came back, you told me you loved me. I would never have thought..."

"But you don't think. Do you?" She does not flinch. She can stand his harshness.

"I know you. I know your nature." She flashes him a sidelong smile, their old smile, the call to the woods. She had taken it all into herself long ago, his harshness, his eccentricity blossoming quickly into madness, the wildness and violence of his nature that he'd never bothered much to disguise. She had _wanted_ it, eaten up the bitterest parts of him as if they were sweet. He has been hers from the moment she was born and that will not change. "I know you."

"No." His eyes dart about the room, as if trying to find a place to rest other than her. "I believed once that we were the same person."

He looks at her and waits. The old catechism. She knows her part.

"We are."

"We are not."

"We _are_."

"Not any more. Perhaps you should thank your God for that," he says to the ceiling above her head.

God? She could laugh if she weren't dying. She killed that man along with her husband. Does her brother seriously think he's the only one who's unholy?

 _Look at me, James. Look at me, damn you. Look at these scars on my face and tell me we are not the same._

He turns away from her, takes a diamond out from one of the drawers and places it on the table. "For your widowhood."

 _Do not do this, James. It is not you. It was my husband who'd sought to buy my silence._

He has not shown her the contents of any of these drawers. He had said she could come and hear everything, but he has told her nothing. And she cannot ask anymore; she opens her mouth and nothing comes out but the cry of a wounded animal. Let him hear that, at least. Let him hear and see and know the full effect of what he has done to her. He says something, not to her but to the air above her, about having work to do. She does not move. He potters about the office while she wails out her pain in inhuman cries. Finally he tells her she must leave; he is locking up. He still will not touch her, still will not meet her gaze.

She stumbles back home.

He does not want her. The horrible thing, the suspicion she cannot quite shake, is that maybe he does not want her because the bloom came off. All those years together, even as children, she had held something back. Had pushed away his kisses when the dinner bell rang, when visitors came to call. Had given herself to him in the woods but then walked out of the clearing as if nothing had ever happened, giving him no token of love to remember her by, forcing him to win her each time anew. And that was what women were supposed to do, wasn't it? Hold something back. She had never though of it that way. He was her brother. They'd grown up together, known each other's natures from the inside out. She had never thought of _him_ as another suitor to be manipulated. But she is no longer young, her face is mottled with bruises and creased with suffering and maybe what he wants now is a young face, one that does not resemble his own.

No. She knows his nature; he could never be satisfied with some insipid girl. He is bound to her, one flesh and one blood.

Did he do this to protect her? Is that it? She saw the remains of the burnt ship. He's told her little enough of his plans, but it hardly takes a genius to surmise that there are many who want him dead. He has set himself up by some fit of madness against the East India Company, and there are few places on this earth their hands do not reach. Does he think that if he turns from her, she will lead a life of quiet and they will let her be? The thought brings her no comfort, only rage. Was she not protected already in her own house. Did she not have all a woman could desire in this world: a husband to keep her safe, servants to look after her every want, ladies of good breeding to keep her company, God to lead her on the path of righteousness and new china in the drawers.

She takes the good china out and starts smashing it piece by piece. What does it matter? She never wanted it. She'll eat like a savage African from now on, it's cleaner. But the maid hears the commotion and rushes in, and it takes all the energy she has left to mime being a lady again:

"I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. It's just that with my dear husband gone, I don't know what will become of me..." The tears fall again. That's all right, tears are perfectly all right, they won't be acceptable forever but they are all right for now. She is in mourning, after all. The maid curtsies, apologizes for disturbing her and asks if she may start sweeping away the shards. She waves her hand around in careless assent. Those two, the shy maid and the dusky footman, they have always been silent as much as possible, tiptoeing around her late husband's rages. They feared him. Will they fear her? How long will it be before they talk?

She goes into her room and lays down upon her freshly laundered sheets. She feels nausea and a painful weight on her chest, like the pains her mother used to have. It is the dead hounding her, wanting to drag her down. No, it's a bad heart. She needs to see a doctor. Later, when she survives this—if she survives this—right now it is dangerous for her to meet a doctor's eyes. The tears still fall, the sobs still wrench themselves out of her despite her being barely able to breathe anymore. She wishes she had the strength to unlace her stays. She wishes James were there to unlace them for her, to free her.

One day, though, she wakes up in the morning with dry eyes and goes into the locked drawer in the sitting room, takes out the first diamond James gave her and places it next to the second one. With these and the savings from her husband's ship-insurance work, she has enough to keep her for quite awhile without having to take in work as a seamstress or a governess or, worse, look for another husband. She is free. It seems a lifeless, colourless existence without her brother. But she is free.

 _Are you done weeping?_ a voice inside her says. James, she thinks, in a sudden access of hope—but she knows that it is not.

"Yes."

 _Then follow me, and I will show you where the gunpowder is stored._

 _..._

She hears the screams in her head before she sees the place. Screams of rage and betrayal, but in English this time and she can understand every word. Even the gibberish radiates with meaning.

 _Where's my mummy? Mummy I'm scared._

 _All of you men are alike, all of you want to ravish me, well here! Have it!_

 _There's been some mistake, what? Some mistake in the files, I'm not mad like these other people. Surely we can resolve this like gentlemen._

 _The worms, the worms are crawling all over me get them off me get them off me I can't stand it!_

 _I am Jesus reborn and all of you will suffer my judgment._

 _Please let me out of this place please I'll be a good mum I promise..._

She opens the heavy steel door to the brick building and goes inside. Barrels everywhere. But in this open building, with no one around to guard them? Madness indeed. She is seized by a premonition: something horrible has happened to James. The people have fled but the barrels could not be moved. They sit and they wait, as she once did in her sitting room.

She sees on the wall the cheery motto, _Mens Sana In Corpore Sano._ Below that, the chains. The voice in her head speaks again, that one voice which rises above all the others. The one that had answered when she prayed for a teacher, a guide.

 _This is where they put me_ , the voice says. _This is where I ended my life. You will end your life here too if you do not act._

Zilpha thinks back to her own mother, who'd been too respectable to go to Bedlam, who'd died right in the middle of her daughter's pregnancy. From a bad heart, they'd said. From weakness, more like it. Her father had pronounced the sin of the daughter the result of a moral failure on the mother's part, and her mother had agreed. She could not find it in her to forgive her children, nor to rage against them for going against the laws of Nature and God. Instead she had prayed and wept and grown sick, exactly as she was supposed to. Oh how gracefully and elegantly she had succumbed.

A man comes in. A rough man with sailor's tattoos on his head and a miasma of butchery surrounding him. She can hear the whispers of those he's murdered following him like a shadow.

"What's this then? Did someone sent me a gift eh? A little whore for me to play with?"

"I'm a friend of James."

"A friend from the East India Company, like." The man takes out a knife and moves towards her.

"No, look! I have proof..." She takes his letters out and holds one out in front of her. The man reads aloud her brother's broken promise to her:

 _I have registered the Delaney Trading Company with Lloyd's of London and I will ready my ship, so that when the time is right and the Company has fallen, we can leave._

"Ah, so you're James's mistress then?" She gives a noncommittal half nod, half shrug; it is easier than saying "sister".

"What is your name?" she says.

"Name's Atticus. And the rest is none of your business."

"I meant no offense."

"It makes no matter. Your loverboy's locked in the Tower. They'll hang him before midnight, I'll wager."

"No," she says to the empty air. The man has lost all interest in her and gone to check on the barrels.

"There's got to be somewhere else to move this shit," he mutters to himself. "Got to speak to that fucking chemist when this is all done with."

"James would tell you to put a guard on those barrels. And to tell that guard to let me in as his representative. My name is Zilpha, please tell that to whoever you hire." The man named Atticus grunts, whether in assent or annoyance she cannot tell. She leaves, closes the steel door behind her and leans on the brick wall. Looks out at the graves of those who came here before her.

"No," she says to herself again. "No. They will not."

…

It is a dour old servant's face that greets her at the threshold. Brace was always her father's man, and he likes her no better now. "If it's your brother you've come to see, you're too late. They took him to the Tower of London."

"Actually, I'm here to pay a call on," the name rolls sardonically off her tongue, "Mrs. Delaney. Is she in?"

He suspects her, she knows, and perhaps of even more things now. But the long-ingrained habit of obedience wins out. He unbolts the door. There in the kitchen, hard at work shucking oysters, is that redheaded Irishwoman her father had taken up with, who'd then attempted in true "actress" fashion to jump from father to son—everyone but her, it would seem, is after those godforsaken Nootka rocks—who'd visited her in her house, and seen her shame. Beside her, also shucking oysters, is a boy she does not recognize. A pale, sickly-looking boy of about eleven. The boy goes about his work mechanically, in complete silence. The woman tears at the oysters with her knife as if meaning to slash at her own breast in a fit of passion. None of the glamour of the stage is evident in her appearance or her bearing. The two could have stepped out of a tableau by Hogarth.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Delaney."

"You may as well call me by my Christian name. We are family, are we not?" She puts the knife down and looks up from her work. Her eyes, Zilpha sees, are rimmed with red.

Their eyes had met over the expanse of her drawing room. A long glance shared while her husband blathered out insulting street gossip. The cuts on her face had been less than a day old. The Irishwoman's eyes had sought hers out, assessing, as women do. Not even James had scrutinized her so closely. She'd stood beside her husband and told the other woman to leave, presented that pretty picture of marital unity he so desired before retiring again to her room. But from that moment on it had been only a matter of time and opportunity. Yes, like it or not, they are family.

"Good afternoon, Lorna." She turns to the boy, crouches down to meet him at eye level. "Good afternoon, young man. My name is Zilpha, what is yours?" She gives him an attempt at a friendly smile, which probably comes out as a horrible grimace; she knows she is not in a fit state to be around a child. But what can be done? He shies away from her wordlessly, like a untamed animal.

"Go on," Lorna says, "it's all right, tell her your name."

"It's Robert, miss," he says. Her entire mind and body go still.

"How goes it for you here?" she says softly. "Are they treating you well?"

"Yes, miss." His voice is so quiet she can hardly hear him. He looks down, appearing all of a sudden very interested in his oysters.

"Yours?" she says, turning to Lorna again.

"Hardly. Though I suppose in a way he is mine now. I took him in because he had no other family that would. He'd been staying on a farm somewhere with a man named Ibbotson, then came to us after the old man was found murdered in a church pew. James had visited him a few times on the farm, that's how he knew to come here. Apparently he'd been paying for the boy's upkeep."

"I see."

"You don't sound surprised."

"That my disreputable brother has fathered some bastard? Should I be?"

But he is such a frail little thing. All the nine months she carried him she'd prayed nonstop for a boy, picturing him grown into a man strong and brave, a champion like the knights of old. She'd seen him stepping forth, leaving the cramped darkness of this house, going out into the world and building up empires. Her recompense. And now though he is none of that she still wants to embrace him, but he'd pull away if she tried, and in any case to do so would give credence to all the rumours Lorna's heard probably a hundred times. This is what it means, then, to be damned...

"From the way you speak of your brother, I suppose you'll be quite overjoyed when he meets his fate. The Crown is going to hang him for treason, you know. I suppose that's what all us _disreputable_ people deserve. And I told him, I told him that Crown and Company would crush him between them but does that man listen? Oh no, he listens to none but the bloody voices in his head. And now we are all left here with nothing to do but cook and await his death."

"He will not die." Zilpha's hand goes up to readjust her hat, a nervous gesture. "Atticus down at the warehouse mentioned something about a chemist. Do you know a chemist?"

"I know of no Atticus. But I do know a chemist, a Mr. Cholmondeley. He quite fancies me, actually."

"A chemist in my brother's employ."

"Yes." She looks around. "Where's that Robert gone off to?" Zilpha looks; the child has silently disappeared.

"Do you have his address?"

"I'll have to look again at the letter he sent me. See if it's in there among all that ridiculous phrasing. He may not be home, though. He spends a good deal of his time doing science exhibitions at wealthy houses. Quite the favorite among the young ladies, so I've heard." Her eyes narrow. "What do you want with him?"

"If he's hanged they'll take him to Newgate. If we arrive there by carriage before six o'clock we can find out from the local gossips if he'll be hanged upon the morn. It should be possible to lay a ring of explosive charges round the site. Or else to fashion grenades, if the crowds are too thick for that, and throw them in among the guards to cause chaos."

"What you are proposing is further treason and will get us all hanged as well. Not to mention the likelihood of injury and death to innocent onlookers."

"Where is the letter?"

"Who know, James may not hang at all. He's fashioned a will that gives Nootka Sound over to the Americans in the event of his death. Quite clever really, and it's kept him alive so far. Though he seems to think that little piece of paper has made him invincible."

Robert comes down the stairs and silently thrusts a piece of paper in front of them. _Atticus_ , it reads, in James's large well-formed hand. "Give me that," Zilpha says. The boy snatches the paper away.

"It's for Atticus to read. But I can't deliver it to him until I get the signal."

 _The son inherits,_ Zilpha thinks acidly, _as before._ She dismisses the thought as unfair. He is just a scared boy doing what he is told.

She seizes him and grabs the letter from his hand. He claws and bites at her and screams as if he were about to be murdered, "Give me that BACK!" over and over until by the time Lorna and Brace have managed to pull him off her, it has become no more than an incoherent roar: _gidaback, gidaback._ She turns away, biting hard into her lower lip to stop the trembling, lights a candle, melts the wax seal just enough to remove it gently, and reads the contents. There are instructions from James to gather up his employees at a building by the docks by high tide, and for removal of the gunpowder "once the East India Company has furnished me with my ship." There is also a smaller sealed envelope inside, "to be opened in the event of my death." This she opens as well. It contains navigation instructions which are mostly meaningless to her, and something about arranging a meeting with a man named Colonnade. She reseals the envelopes and turns again to her son.

"There are others?" Robert sobs louder upon hearing her voice, but does not answer. "There are others. Search him." Lorna turns away in disgust at their rough treatment of the child, but Brace has no such scruples. He reaches in the boy's pockets and pulls out a key. "Give that to me, Brace."

He hesitates. "Mr. Delaney didn't say anything about giving them to _you_."

" _Mr_. Delaney is consigning himself to death in his foolishness. You've already seen the father die, would you like to see the son die as well?" He falters for a moment, and she snatches the key away from him. "Do you know what this key opens?" He only scoffs at her, but it does not matter. After a few minutes' search upstairs, she has found the safe box. She opens and reseals each letter in turn while Brace mutters curses on "all you mad Delaneys" under his breath, and Lorna tries to distract Robert with sweets which he steadfastly refuses. There is one for Cholmondeley—she takes note of the address—another for Lorna which she reads aloud, another for Brace which she spitefully decides not to show him, and one for her. _Dearest Sister,_ it begins, _by the time I came back from Africa I was already a dead man. I have participated in horrors the likes of which you cannot even imagine, and the stains they have left on my soul can never be washed off. But for you, my love—for you, I wanted life..._ Her vision blurs. She cannot bear to read much more. She skims the letter and, finding no practical instructions, crumples it up in her hand. The other letters said "in the event of my death," but the one to her treats it as a certainty. Why is it that now only death will allow him to speak what is in his heart?

She dries her eyes, then holds up the key and the remaining letters to her son. "Do you understand why I did this?" He spits at her. She wipes it off. "I did this because while your father is very clever, he is not infallible. No man is. There may come a time when you as well will be forced to question his judgment." She gives them back. "It's all right, Brace, you can let him go."

"I miss my da," the boy whispers, defeated, choking back a sob. Then he runs upstairs. She knows it is not James he means, but Ibbotson. She wonders if he was forced to witness the man's murder firsthand.

"Please call a carriage, Brace," Zilpha says, readjusting her hat. The old servant just continues muttering curses. "Never mind, I'll do it myself."

"You're mad," Lorna says. "And he may not even be there."

"If Mr. Cholmondely is away giving one of his presentations, I will call again early tomorrow morning. And if he is not at his house then I will call on every fashionable young widow in London. Absent of witchcraft, there is nothing else to be done." She turns to leave, then pauses at the door. "I think it will be best if I move here for a while. I will say I am visiting some of my mother's relations in the country. The servants at the house are my husband's hires, I do not trust them but I fear to let them go. Brace at least was always loyal to the men of this family." She will pack a few articles of clothing, the two diamonds, and a few of her own personal effects. Let the maid and the footman steal the rest if they want it. What does it matter to her? Let them steal and sell the china and the silver and the furniture and the drapes off the very windows. They were never hers.

Only James was ever hers.

In her mind's eye she sees an image of waves crashing over rocks, and canoes wending their way between them. Hears the cry of the raven, the guardian, as it flies overhead along all the mountains and the sea. Nootka. This supposed birthright, this supposed homeland she has never once visited.

…

Zilpha learned a long time ago to move through the woods without sound. In the house, it is the same principle. The man who just got in—a burglar, she hopes, and not a murderer—is not being nearly so careful. She was awake before he got there, cursed (blessed?) with the inability to sleep. It was the screams keeping her up again. They quiet, though, when she focuses her attention on this intruder. She gets up from her bed, hiking up the hem of her nightgown so it will brush against nothing, and follows him. She does not need a candle to see him in the dark.

She sees him drop a flat package on one of the tables. A strange thief, that comes to give instead of take. She waits for him to move on, snatches it up and reads:

 _I, James Keziah Delaney, hereby declare all previous wills and testaments null and..._

A murderer, then.

Keeping her steps light, she walks around through the kitchen and meets him in the drawing room. She comes up from behind him and puts the knife she's taken from the counter to his throat.

"Tell me why I should not kill you."

The man laughs, a short, sharp bark. "I mean no harm, little lady. Thought the house was empty, 'cept maybe for that actress he keeps chained up in his basement. Are you the actress?"

"I'm the actress," Lorna says, coming down the stairs with a candle in her hand. "What is this?"

"An East India man," Zilpha says.

"Ah, so you've read the letter. Go ahead and burn it if you want. There's another one in his office and another one dropped off at Lloyd's of London. And the one on his person, of course." He twists his neck up to look at her. She presses the knife in until it almost pierces the skin but not quite. He turns his head back around. "Ever thought of being an actress?" He grunts. "All right, enough of this." He pulls his wrist out from her grasp, takes her arm with the knife in it in and wrenches it down hard with both hands, throws her flat on her back and kicks her in the stomach. He then saunters off toward the front door.

"Wait!" Lorna says. "Wouldn't you like to know what he did to me when I was chained up?" The man laughs but pays no more mind.

Zilpha realizes she's been a fool. He could have escaped at any time, he only delayed because he liked being that close to her.

She springs at him like a tigress from cover and tackles him about the legs. He falls, and before he can make another move she has plunged the kitchen knife deep into his neck. His blood seeps into her nightgown as he gurgles out his last breath.

"Dear God. Was it really necessary to murder that man?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

 _Because he thought I was no threat._

"Because he saw my face. Do you have a clean dress I can borrow?"

"I suppose I do."

Zilpha looks out the window. "You should put on a coat yourself. I'll need your help if we are to get this body out of here before dawn. The river wants him, and we don't have much time."


	6. War, Pt II

**War, Pt. II**

She studies the document by candlelight. It is a very good forgery. No one would notice the will was not written in his hand unless they had gone over his letters again and again, knowing it was sinful but still compulsively tracing the shapes of his words, his knowledge of her mind and body, his promise to her. _I will visit you in your dreams, my love._ Her dreams are all of drowning now. The language of the will is stilted, it doesn't sing in her head the way his real words do. Not that it matters. If the document is contested in court they will have already bribed the judge. Lorna, reading over her shoulder, sighs and gently squeezes her arm. "I am sorry," she says.

A few minutes ago they had dressed in shabby men's clothes—Lorna's, from some of her stage plays—and carried the body to the foreshore. They had done their work wordlessly, except for an Irish ditty Lorna had hummed under her breath as they heaved him in. The moon had glittered on the surface of the Thames, making its garbage-infested waters seem almost beautiful. From its depths, the dead had called to her. They're lonely, are they? They want company, do they? Well here is one. A tightly sealed burlap sack, weighed down with river rocks and loosened paving stones. It was not enough. They wanted her too.

The will is not written in his hand, but the signature is. What has been done to him? Her imagination provides the answer. They have stuffed him full of laudanum and tortured him until he'd sign documents attesting he'd murdered God himself if that was what they wanted. She sees his body stretched out on the rack, the flesh she had thirsted after burned with hot pokers, the hands that had awakened her swollen purple from blows with steel bars. She touches Lorna's hand. It is there, real and alive, a small comfort. She forces her eyes towards the will again. _I bequeath all right and title to Nootka Sound in perpetuity to..._

Oh but this is too much.

 _...Zilpha Geary, née Delaney, of..._

She cannot stop laughing. Lorna claps a hand over her mouth: "Do you want to wake up the whole house?" Brace is asleep and snoring loudly, Robert either asleep or pretending to be. She knows the giggles rising up in her are hysterical ones but really, it is too funny. Those fools at the East India Company thought she would...they thought...

 _Do not think the land is yours to use as you want,_ the voice inside says sharply. _The land is on loan. We wrote it down as owned by Horace Delaney because ownership is all these men understand. And because we knew they would honor a treaty with a citizen of their own nation, even one they hate, sooner than they will honor a treaty with us. But the Sound is token of a debt, and that debt will be repaid._

Repaid how? The answer comes to her in images rather than words. Blood, English and American. The thought should frighten her, but instead it makes her calm. The same calm she felt just after she drove the knife into the East India man's neck.

She pries the actress's hand from her mouth. "I believe it is high time to call on Mr. Cholmondeley," she whispers. "No carriages at this hour, of course, so we'll have to walk." She looks into the other woman's face and sees her skepticism. "Yes, you are coming with me."

"I want no further part in your madness," Lorna whispers back.

"You will do it, though, to save James's life. Also to save mine, if you care about such things. I need you for this, Lorna. A woman alone on the streets of London at this hour is easy prey. Two women are not."

For years her eyes had skittered away when anyone's gaze rested upon hers for more than a brief moment. James had not cared a whit for such subterfuge. His witch eyes had pierced her, held her and devoured her, forced her secrets out and her flesh to return to him. Now she gazes into the Irish actress's blue-gray eyes and does not let her look away, meets her soul there and shows it the power of her will.

…

"I feel like a character in one of my own melodramas," Lorna says as they leave the house. "One of the more poorly written ones. Although if I were, I suppose I'd be making a speech right about now. Moaning and bewailing cruel fate, loudly crowing over the divine vengeance to be wrought upon my enemies, that sort of thing."

"Do you believe in divine vengeance?" Zilpha asks.

She lets out a little harrumph. "Not really."

"I just don't understand these men's plans. It makes no sense. Why would they grant a piece of land to the sister of the man they've just murdered for it?"

"I don't see what's so complicated about it. You're a woman, what would you want with some rocks halfway across the earth? What business could you possibly carry out with them? Naturally they assumed you'd give it up if they pressured you to sell. Your husband wanted the land, true, but only for the money that could be made from it. Any fool could see he'd have given it up in a minute for the right price. Which reminds me, I almost forgot to offer my sympathies on your husband's passing. Bye-the-bye, how did that man pass away?"

"Cholera." She tightens the scarf about her neck, and quickens her pace.

…

The first near-imperceptible lightening of the early morning sky has just taken place when they arrive at the courtyard of the little brick boarding-house. "Second door from the left," Zilpha says softly, more to herself than to the other woman. The door is unlocked. They enter into a tiny bare hallway.

"I'll wait here while you do your business," Lorna declares. "I've had enough uncouth admirers in my time, I don't want to give this one any ideas by marching in on him while he's in his nightclothes. Or worse." Zilpha nods.

She raps on the inner door softly, "Mr. Cholmondeley?" Her voice is soft and polite, a lady's voice. She shakes herself. He will be dead asleep at this hour, what on earth could she be thinking acting like this? "Mr. Cholmondeley!" Her voice and her knock are louder this time, with what she hopes is a note of command. Behind the door, silence. She bangs on the door with all her might, puts her lips to the crack between door and frame. "Mr. Cholmondeley, god damn it!" She hears a faint stirring, a woozy mumbling. Then silence again. She tries the latch. At first she is sure the door is locked, but in her frustration she shakes and fiddles roughly with the knoband realizes that it was only stuck. She barges in. There is a girl lying stark naked on the bed, another lying in near-undress on the floor. The room stinks of cheap gin. The chemist is lying by the window in his nightshirt, unmoving, but she sees one eye flutter open.

"Get up," she says. "Mr. Delaney has need of you."

The chemist speaks slowly, his voice so low she can barely hear it. "How the hell did he find me?"

She does not answer, just looks at him. Takes in the ugliness of his near-naked middle-aged body, the gin bottle lying empty on the floor, the clothes scattered haphazardly all about the room, the unconscious forms of the two girls half his age. It means nothing to her, all she wants is his skill with the powder. But let him think that she has come here to judge. She must look like a specter in this dim room, dressed as she is in mourning black. He is a rational man of science, true. But she was a sensible woman once, and she knows by now that neither reason nor sense will save one from the fear of one's own appetites.

"He sees me in my dreams. Is that it?"

She says not a word, merely smiles.

His head rises slightly, then falls again, as if its weight were too much for him to bear. His eyes close. It is a pretense; he is no more asleep by now than she is.

"You have ten minutes," she tells him. "I will be waiting just outside."

She finds Lorna in the courtyard, her arms folded, her eyes roving anxiously over the other doors. "I couldn't stand the stuffy air of that place. Are we done?"

"Almost. I gave him ten minutes to put some proper clothes on. He was too horrified at being found out here to even ask who I was. The man is convinced James sees him in his dreams. So he'll do what we want, I think."

"Dreams? How lovely." She looks about their surroundings in clear scorn, not the detached disdain of the charitable society matron but the ferocious hatred of one who has risen up out of the same sort of place. "Is that how we came to be at this address?"

"Of course not. We're here because I bribed his footman this afternoon."

"I see."

"Wasn't cheap, either."

They fall into silence. Zilpha is just about to knock on the door again when the chemist comes out. He still smells of gin, but as far as looks go he's completely presentable. She informs him that they will be proceeding to his workshop. He barely notices her; the moment he sees Lorna outside he can do nothing but shuffle and mumble "dear lady, oh my dear lady, what a surprise, oh dear..." An old woman, come out to do the washing, gawks at them as they leave under the quickly lightening sky. Lorna grabs him roughly by the arm.

"I don't want to see you in this place again, you understand? Or we are _done_."

The chemist is proving himself to be a damn fool. His expression visibly brightens as if he doesn't even realize the obvious, that Lorna is putting on a show for the old woman. She pushes him away just as roughly the instant they are out of sight of the courtyard, but he walks on with a dazed smile still fixed to his face. Zilpha lets the actress deal with it. She is resolved to say no more to this man than she absolutely has to. He will fear her more that way. It has to be thus; she cannot put a knife to this one's throat.

The workshop is messy, but not in the way the boarding-house room was; it is the messiness of a man in thought, and she has a strong feeling that despite the appearance of disorder Mr. Cholmondeley knows exactly where to find everything in here he might need. Lorna walks around staring at all the strangely shaped glass jars, fascinated despite herself. Zilpha wants to look as well, but she keeps her eyes fixed on the man. He takes one of the jars out, pours something into a glass and swigs from it.

"So what does James want? No, don't tell me. He wants things that go bang," the chemist says in a singsong voice.

"Yes."

"Things that cause confusion."

"A ring of explosives round the gallows at Newgate wall."

"This morning?"

"No. It won't be this morning. But prepared for when they bring him out. On the morrow, or within the next few days."

The chemist's eyes have been swinging back and forth between his equipment, his glass and Lorna. But now he looks directly at her. "James told you that?" Again, she meets his gaze and says nothing. He chuckles. "There's only one problem with your plan. It assumes he'll be taken out for a public hanging. The way I see it is, it's far likelier they'll execute him within the Tower complex. Or better yet, in his cell. Say it was a suicide, or some such rot. So if this was your—James's—grand plan for rescue, I'm afraid I'll have to be going. Unless you would like a grand tour of my laboratory?" he says, turning to Lorna.

"I quite would, actually," Lorna says. "What does this here do?" She reaches out to touch one of the devices, a hesitant light touch, looking absolutely entranced. The chemist follows her gaze and starts spooling out a complex explanation in soft tones. Zilpha flashes her a quick grateful smile.

She paces about the least cluttered corner of the workshop, perhaps a yard of floor space. If James is to be killed within his cell...perhaps he is already killed. But if he were dead she'd know it. Wouldn't she? He'd join them: her husband and her father and all the others. Wouldn't he? She doesn't know. She is still not completely sure she is not just going mad. If she is going mad then perhaps they killed him days ago. No, not days ago, they'd need to have the will in place first. If he were dead wouldn't he visit her in her dreams? Why doesn't he now? He is in the Tower...they are torturing him. That's why he doesn't visit. He wants to protect her but it is no use, she feels every blow they land on him as if it were on her own body. He is in the Tower. What does she know of that place? As a child she passed by the building many times, she remembers looking at the guards outside it and wondering how they could stand so still for so long. Their discipline, so alien to her own childish nature, was a source of deep wonder to her. Once she'd slipped away from her mother on an outing and watched them for a good hour, and they did not move their feet once that she could recall. That, she believed, what was a gentleman was, or should be. Are they gentlemen, really? Not kind, not good, but gentlemen. She doesn't know. But an idea is forming in her mind. Gentlemen, not men but gentlemen standing as still as statues...ladies, weak and elegant like her mother...a ring of explosives.

"Lorna."

"What?" She does not look up from her contemplation of the workshop's contents. But the actress is listening, she knows.

"We can _sew_ , can't we Lorna?" She lets out a chuckle of her own, one drenched in bitterness.

"Yes, I believe we can," Lorna says absently.

"We can sew, and we can pray, and we can weep on command. We can do all those quite quickly if need be. Mr. Cholmondeley?"

"I'm sorry, but I really don't appreciate you interrupting my..."

"A timed explosive charge. Timed to go off within the space of hours or minutes, _not_ seconds. Small enough to be carried in a pouch under the skirts, weak enough not to destroy a building but strong enough to kill a man. Several of these, as many as two can carry under their shifts. Plus one the right size to break open a door. Can you do it?"

For the second time that day, he really looks at her. "Yes. I believe I can."

"My brother is to receive visitors, then. Two ladies coming to pray for him. And one of us shall be weak, tottering on a cane or her companion's arm, enough to necessitate frequent stops...frequent stops next to the guards. It should be me, I think. My face already looks like shit, so it won't be too surprising if I've got a broken leg as well. Lorna...you care for my brother. Do you not?"

…

All morning she curses her abysmal ignorance. So much she chose to forget, so much she never learned in the first place. She knows the word for "raven", and the word for "mother", and the word for "love", but not the words for "will" or "forged document". And she cannot use any names, or place-names, or English loan-words. But her self-loathing lessens slightly when they pass the first locked gate and she sees that she was right about the guards. They search her and her lady companion, but only as far as modesty permits. Which is not very far.

She is grateful for their stiff propriety. Although she would have stuffed the gunpowder up her cunt if that was what it took.

It is cold and dank within these stone walls, and the guards leer at them, and she can hear the screams of the many who died here but she does not care, neither the living nor the dead have the power to frighten her any longer. Her only fear is that she will not have the words, to make James understand.

It used to be so easy, whispering at the dinner table in the sharp tones of their secret language, speaking to each other with their eyes and small movements of the fingers when that got banned. Long summers spent visiting her cousins in the country—a passel of girls roughly her age who he hadn't liked much, what with their endless talk of suitors, gentleman suitors, dashing of course—they'd liked him for a moment in his cadet uniform and then lost interest upon seeing he was still the same uncouth boy they remembered—but none of that mattered at night, when they could slip off into the depths of the wooded acreage their father hunted in, and be alone. Even in the daytimes sometimes, on riding trips, on days too muddy and wet for the others to want to go, when she could forgo riding sidesaddle and drive the horse hard the way she liked, the way her brother liked, yes my love, faster now Zilpha my love, we shall soon be away. It used to be so easy for her to give the signal, and he would understand, and always follow her. Even before all that, as children, they had barely needed a word to begin their games: chasing each other round the house, or together chasing some imaginary deer, when they played at being "savages". A game Father chuckled at and Mother hated. (And once, just before getting shipped off to seminary, he'd taken her to the floor, a captured "Englishmun", and said to her in their playacting: "I'll take you away. To be my savage bride," and rubbed his face against hers. And then he'd quickly got up, and she'd thought no more of it. Until one or two years later when she could think of nothing else.)

She leans harder on Lorna's arm as the guard opens the locked cell for them and then stands there watching, spying. She is not a girl any longer, she must remember to limp when she walks in. For this, at least, she must remember to look frail.

"You're hurt," he says, eyes fixed on her.

"More than you know." There are a few hard wooden chairs clustered around a small wooden table. Bottles of wine which none of them will drink. Pieces of paper, some with James's writing on them. New scars on his face, which she must not allow herself to touch. She takes hold of one of the chairs and slowly sits down.

"Why are you here?"

"To pray for you one last time. You must trust in the Lord, for your earthly protection is gone now."

He grimaces. "Your _lord..._ "

"It is gone now, James."

A jolt goes through him. _Good, he understands._ But it is only a moment before the arrogant sneer returns to his face.

"I should have thought you'd had the religion fucked out of you by now," he says slowly, deliberately, eyes still fixed utterly on her. She squeezes her eyes shut in despair, words already failing her. What can she possibly say to that, here? "Very well. Go on and pray to your God. As I shall pray to mine."

"Shall we start with the 23rd Psalm?" Lorna says, taking out her pocket prayer-book. She wants to get this over with.

Zilpha hazards a sidelong glance at the guard. He looks younger than any of the others they passed, but the hardness is his face is the same as in all the rest of them. He seems amused by the whole exchange. Probably wishes he could tell the praying old biddies in his own life the same thing. Or did he figure out the true nature of the history James has just so blatantly hinted at? It does not matter. For once, for once in their whole lives, it does not matter.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want..."

"Onyame, Odomankoma, Nyankopon. Asase Yaa..."

His strange incantations rise and fall in harmony with their familiar prayers, and for a moment she could almost believe that they are praying together.

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies..."

He pours out some of the wine onto the floor. "I don't know if you remember Godders, from my cadet days? He is due to testify before a royal commission at midday regarding the sinking of a certain slave ship, and the head of the East India Company will do anything to make me shut him up. So the head of the East India Company belongs to me now. He hates me, it is true, but he hates justice more."

She squeezes Lorna's hand and the actress's prayers increase in volume, increase in intensity as Zilpha stops praying, lets out a sob and then says softly in the secret language: "And how do you know your enemies have not already made treaty with each other? If they have, there will be men waiting there to kill your friend at midday."

"There is nothing I can do to turn you from this madness?" he replies in the same tongue.

"It is already done." Loudly, in English: "Please James, please pray with us." Softly, in the secret language: "Are you strong enough to run?" '

James nods.

"After we leave, stay far from the door. You will hear the sound of thunder, the door will open and your captors will all die. Run then." She sobs again, then rejoins the other woman in prayer:

"For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen." It is done.

The guard standing outside the cell door wants to search them as they leave. The one inside waves him off: "Aw, save yerself the trouble. I've been watching this whole time and not a single thing's passed between anybody's hands." Their argument makes it easy for the two pious ladies to drop off unnoticed another pair of timed charges, paired so that if one fails to go off, the other one will be there to rescue it. Slowly, painfully slowly, they make their way out of the prison complex, walk down the street and turn the corner, where a closed carriage is waiting for them.

The carriage takes off at a tremendous pace. Zilpha hazards a quick peek past the curtains that shield them from view: yes, they are heading towards the waterfront.

"You should not have done that," Lorna whispers.

"I know," she whispers back, "but I had to be sure."

"Thank you again," she tells Lorna after they've alighted from the carriage and paid the driver for his services. Then she begins her count. She is grateful to the other woman, more than she can convey in words, but there are things she has not told her. Only her and Cholmondeley know about the package to be delivered by messenger to the East India offices. Her brother may believe in royal commissions, in justice, but she believes in none but the whispers in her head that tell her: _Trust not a word in their treaties. Trust only in their gunpowder._ Sixty seconds. And not a single soul but her knows that the last of the balls of powder were not placed inside the prison. That when she conferred with the driver to pay him for his work, she did what was necessary. Waited til his attention was occupied with counting the money and dropped off a package by his seat, two small hard hollow chambers cushioned in soft black cloth. For no other reason than because he took them there, and because everyone in London is bribeable. One hundred and twenty. They will live, she and her brother both. She hurries Lorna along to the storage building by the docks, where her son, having delivered his own messages, should be there waiting for her.

…

The moment James arrives he starts barking out orders to the others, to Cholmondeley and Atticus and Atticus's men. They obey him without question. As for her, she is another piece of the cargo. Perhaps not even that. Orders all given, he sits down alone in a corner and say nothing to anyone. She approaches him, making her way gingerly between the trunks full of cargo she has no knowledge of and the shabbily dressed men and women who do not trust her. "I need to speak to you."

"Well?"

She turns away and walks out of the building, finds a narrow alleyway between the stone houses, waits.

It takes him longer than it should to find her. But he is there. He positions himself across from where she stands and slumps against the stone wall. Raises his head to look at her briefly before letting it fall again, his eyes full of helpless longing. For a brief moment she sees herself as he must want to see her now: with the face and body she had as a girl, smiling and laughing even more than she did then, dancing off alone in some green wood somewhere, untouched by the rank corruption and misery of the world. It is a beautiful, delicate, gossamer vision. It will not last.

"What do you want from me?"

"A place on your ship," she says calmly.

"What ship? There is no ship. All I have worked for lies in ruins, thanks to your actions."

" _My_ actions? Did I not make myself plain when we spoke in your cell? The East India Company was about to have you murdered in there. Your will wasn't going to protect you any longer, they'd written up a new one that gave away Nootka Sound. So naturally I thought..."

"You don't think. You never think. If you'd thought even for a moment you'd have done nothing and been well off. Instead you bring a rain of destruction down and then come to me for protection from what you yourself have wrought, as if I am a god and can shield you from everything. You come to me _needing_ a place on my ship, because without one you will hang. Well you would have one if there was one. I will protect you as much as I am able from the consequences of your foolish treason, because you are my sister. Let all else lie." His voices lowers into a vicious snarl at these last words, hers. He hates her. At last some damned honesty from him.

"You know I will not," she says, and starts to move closer.

He takes her by the throat and turns her around in one quick motion, pushes her up against the wall and presses his lips to hers. There is no gentleness left in his touch. He takes her breath from her as he kisses her, sucking at her lip as if he wanted to bite and swallow it down, invading her mouth abruptly with his tongue, holding her hard between the wall and his body, crushing her against him. Then pushes her away so hard her head bangs against the stones, and she nearly stumbles and falls but catches herself in time.

She wipes her mouth off, deliberately readjusts her hat and looks deep into his eyes. Assessing, as women do.

"Be careful, brother," she says softly.

...

Just then a man in sailor's garb runs into their little alleyway.

"Mr. Delaney! The ship's come into port!" Even before the man has spoken, James is all business again. He turns to leave. She grabs hold of his arm.

"Be careful," she says, "don't go too quickly onto that ship. The hold will be filled with either explosives..."

"Or armed men, yes I know. It is a trap for sweet Godders. They knew I would not leave him to London and their tender mercies." In the distance, she hears the sound of shouts and hoofbeats. She knows without seeing that it is royal troops, coming around in a pincer motion. Death coming for him in the guise of English gentleman soldiers, resplendent in their red and white coats. Death will not have him, though, for she is not done with him.

"You have guns prepared?"

"Yes."

"And buckets, if it is explosives?"

He looks at her. Not lustfully, but thoughtfully. It has been a long time since he gave her that look. The last time, she remembers, was before he went off to Africa, during one of their beautiful woodland summers, after he'd seen her bring down a deer with her bow at a hundred yards. Back when they were children, and none of what they did actually mattered.

"I did not think my ship would still come. But yes, there are buckets. Atticus will be supervising that part. It is has to be done with _care_ , you understand? Too much water and she will sink. Atticus knows more about ships than anyone else here. He's the one with the compass drawn..."

"I know who he is."

"Then tell him I told you to help with the distribution. Make sure every person who cannot fire a gun gets one. _Now!_ "

She picks up the hem of her skirts and breaks into a run. Not long after, she hears the sound of the first of their own explosives going off.

…

The "Good Hope" is mostly quiet by the time the bell rings for the midnight watch. Robert is safely tucked in. Perhaps even sleeping sound. Some of the fear in his eyes has gone, she sees, since he came aboard ship. She'd sang him a lullaby earlier, and though at first he'd declared angrily that he was too old for that shit and especially from a stupid meddling woman like her, she'd begged him to humor a stupid woman's whim and he'd let her sit by him and sing to him, and by the end of the song he was asleep. Not feigning, but truly asleep. It had been a deep pleasure for her to watch as his muscles slowly relaxed. There are a few others still up—the sailors on watch of course, and a few men she thinks must be Atticus's friends are betting in low voices over a card game—but most of the ship's passengers are asleep and snoring. Only she cannot.

Behind the closed door of the cabin he's staked out as his, she hears her brother talking to himself. It is all African gibberish to her except for one anguished word: "Um-iiqsu." Mother.

She goes in and quickly closes the door behind her.

He is sitting on the edge of the cabin's small bed, his head in his hands, naked. His skin is painted all over in strips of yellow and red ochre. The paint-marks are alien but beautiful to her. _I could take him right here,_ she thinks. She wants to. He wouldn't resist. And she is damn near past caring what the others on the ship think. But the other need— _um-iiqsu—_ the other need is stronger still.

"Why did you not tell me of him?"

"Who?"

She sits beside him on the narrow bed and takes his hands in hers. They sit there like dead weight. "You know who," she says softly. "The boy Robert. Our child."

"I did not know of him myself until he was past ten. Father told me of him when I was in Africa." She does not ask how, she already knows that.

"That is no answer." She moves up til she is astride him and digs her nails down deep into his palms. He tries to shift his hands away, but she leans down with all her weight and holds him there. She watches the shadows of pain flicker across his face. Her voice comes out in a harsh whisper, acrid from years of unuse. "You came back. Hm? For your inheritance. Why did you not tell me of him? Father never said a word. He spoke to you in Africa but to me he said nothing, and I visited near every afternoon. And I begged him, begged him to tell me at least: alive or dead? And he would not. I killed him for that. When I realized he never would."

He grimaces and grits his teeth against the agony in his hands. "I wanted..." She lets go and comes down to sit again beside him. He snorts. "I wanted to free you," he says. "How free could you be with a child you barely know hanging round your neck?"

"And yet you took him on your ship." For a moment she cannot bear to look at him. Instead she looks down at her own hands, now folded innocently on her lap.

"He has been useful to me."

"I'm sure he has. He's terrified of you, James. That will not last."

He bares his teeth in a horrid smile. "Won't it?"

"It will not. Because I am here now."

His face darkens even more. "You should not have come."

"I should not have saved your life?"

"I told you, the Crown will seek to hang you now, just as they seek to hang me. Even in America they will have their agents. You will never be free again."

She does not know how to tell him, does not know how to make him see that she chose this. That no other choice was left to her once she had learned to follow her heart. "It's doesn't matter," she says finally. "We have time now. A little bit at least." She reaches out to stroke his dear face. He flinches. "You said you loved me." She is near tears again.

"I do." He puts his hand over hers, and she can see that he is not lying, can see in his eyes the desire still there, to take her hand and kiss it and bite it. To take her face in his hands and kiss her, long and deep. To take her in his arms again and to hell with everything else. But he is trapped within his own night battle, and the fear wins out. He shudders, squeezes her hand convulsively and then lets go. "You are right. We have time here on this ship. So leave me be, for now." He turns away from her, makes as if to go to sleep.

But she cannot spare him completely. She makes no further move to touch him but stays sitting at the foot of his cabin's small bed, watching him for a long time. _Dear James_ , she thinks, _what has been done to you?_

It is his mother who answers.

 _His eyes were opened for him. When he was a small child. They said I tried to kill him, but they would have killed him themselves had I not stopped them. As they killed the woman who came after me. As they tried to kill you. I gave him to the spirits of the river, to be our weapon._

"Ours?" She sees her brother's form shift uneasily beside her. He knows she is not talking to him.

She needs to get out of this room. She will come back later—she will never be done with him—but for right now, the stench of fear here is overwhelming.

She goes up on deck. Holds on to the ropes and takes the night's breath deep into her body. The stars above are pretty, but it is not enough. Soon, she resolves, she will find someone, James or another member of the crew, who will teach her how to navigate by them. She wonders how long it took James to learn that African tongue he uses in his workings. How long it will take her. How many people she will have to kill before her son is safe in this world.

"Ours?" she whispers once more to the black sea ahead.

 _The people of our war confederation. The alliance of Raven and Sankofa. When I left my homeland we had representatives from many peoples. Asante. Fante. Ewe. Akuapem. Yoruba. Salish. Nootka._

* * *

 **A/N: Apologies for the many historical / cultural boners I'm sure I've committed! In particular, I realize that it may not be realistic to portray people of the African kingdoms mentioned above as working together, given that the Asante and Fante were at war with each other, and the Asante kingdom in particular derived great financial benefit from slavery. However, this time period also saw the blossoming of pan-African ideology, as evidenced by groups like the Sons of Africa (a real group, not something they made up for the show! I encourage everybody to look them up), so I'm hoping it's not _too_ unrealistic. Please correct me if I'm wrong!**

 **(To tell the truth, I doubt anybody reading this much cares though. As much as I'd love to discuss this show with someone who knows Twi, I have a feeling that any person of African or First Nations descent who got wind of this show took one look at the description and was like, "Oh yeah, just what the world needs, another 'Heart of Darkness'," and thought no more of it.)**

 **Also, a note on the supernatural. I remember reading an interview with Tom Hardy where he talked about the purposeful ambiguity in James's visions: is he a shaman, or does he have PTSD? And, well, that's the central question, isn't it? For myself, I wanted James (and Winter, and Zilpha) to be a shaman. Or at least someone with real powers, who could become a shaman given the proper training. Because if it's just PTSD, you can pity but not identify with them. We're not supposed to identify with madness these days, we're supposed to either not have it or successfully get rid of it with drugs and therapy. But if he's a shaman, then maybe the show's message is that we should all be more like him. Should open our minds up to things unseen, listen for the voices of the ancestors, love "inappropriate" people without shame, and fight back against the corporations who own the world even more now than they did in 1814.**

 **Okay, enough political soapboxing about a goddam fictional TV show. I'm done.**


End file.
